


Deviations

by paragraph (ebcdic)



Category: Canadian Music RPF
Genre: Busking, M/M, Prostitution, Research, Unhappy Ending, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 04:45:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12646380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebcdic/pseuds/paragraph
Summary: It's like Pretty Woman only with a lot of research jargon and men.





	Deviations

Michael sat on the sidewalk in an outfit he had picked out at the thrift store the day before and hoped to hell that he blended in with the rest of the panhandlers and buskers up and down the block. Absently, he strummed his guitar but didn't put too much effort in it. He wasn't homeless or desperate or even a musician, he was there to observe. Across the street, a group of boys stood at the mouth of an alley. Michael used the word boys because they all seemed to be so much younger than him, but he knew from the literature that they often dressed that way on purpose to attract customers-- johns, he mentally corrected himself. When he thought that he could get away with it, he pulled out a little notebook and jotted down notes. Not that he needed to do that with his kind of memory, but it was the principle of the thing.

Night after night he did the same thing before fleeing back to his posh apartment closer to the University that was paid for with his father's generosity. As long as you stay in school, the world is yours, his father always said and it stuck with Michael despite himself. That's why he sat up and transcribed his observations as the sun rose, catching only a short nap before heading to classes for the day. Education was more important than anything else in the word, after all, wasn't it? 

For months, Michael sat there on the sidewalk and observed his sample population. Occasionally a member of it would disappear or a new one would join, but Michael never put much thought into that other than to lament that he would have to explain it all once he started putting together his thesis. One night, a new person arrived in his sample, but his reception was that of someone who had been there before and had come back. He looked like Buddy Holly's little brother and smiled far more than the rest of the group. In fact, as far as appearances went, he didn't look like he belonged there at all. But within moments of his arrival, he had several customers vying for attention. Michael was fascinated. Who was this kid? Did boys often come and go from this profession like this one seemed to have done? Michael started forming hypotheses in his mind and he jotted them down furiously when he got home.

A couple of weeks later, he was shocked when the kid jogged across the street and crouched down in front of him, depositing a couple of dollars into his guitar case.

"Listen, man," he said softly, like he didn't want to hurt Michael's feelings. "I hate to break it to you, but you've gotta be good at playing to earn anything out here." He waved his hand down the block toward the other buskers and then tilted his head when Michael didn't say anything. Michael didn't know what to say; his sample wasn't supposed to come over and speak to him. 

"Are you hungry, man?" Michael nodded despite himself. "Alright, let's get you something to eat." 

Michael packed up his guitar and let himself be led into a little diner down the street. What else could he do? This kid thought he was some homeless busker and to let him know otherwise would jeopardize everything he had been working on. So he sat down across from this kid and tried to pretend like he hadn't eaten in days, when in reality he had just eaten quite a substantial dinner at one of the best restaurants in town with his father only a few hours before. 

"Order anything you want, I don't mind."

The words startled Michael out of his desperate search for vegetarian fare on the menu. "Oh, umm, thanks."

"You don't talk much, do you?" The kid asked as he leaned forward over the table. "What's your name?"

Michael didn't know what to say to that. He decided that his middle name would do. "Raine."

The kid smiled wide as he laughed softly. "Your parents were hippies, eh?" 

"Oh, umm, yeah," Michael said as he tried to smile back. In fact, his parents couldn't possibly be less like hippies if they tried, but he figured it was best to just go with the flow of the conversation.

"I'm Jeremy," he said, extending his hand across the table for Michael to shake, "but I came so close to being Precious, so I get it, man."

Michael awkwardly shook his hand. "Pleasure to meet you."

"Pleasure to meet you too, man," Jeremy said but there was laughter in his voice as though he couldn't believe that people still said things like that.

The waitress came then and Jeremy ordered enough food to feed an army. Michael wasn't sure what to order and so he went with what was simplest, a salad. After the waitress left, Jeremy shook his head in disbelief. "You're starving and you order a salad?"

"I'm a vegetarian," Michael muttered. It was the truth, but he wondered if this kid would buy it.

Jeremy laughed. "A homeless vegetarian. I've seen it all now, man."

"I, umm--"

Jeremy cut him off with a wave of his hand and an apologetic smile. "I'm just fucking with you." He leaned over the table again and his voice dropped down. "So, if you don't mind me asking, how did you end up out there?"

Michael almost asked out where before he remembered himself and quickly composed a story in his head. "My, uhh, dad. He didn't like the whole music thing so he, umm, kicked me out."

"Oh, that's rough, man."

And there was a surprising amount of sincerity in the kid's voice. Michael cleared his throat. "Umm, what about you?"

Jeremy blinked. "What? Oh, I'm not homeless."

"But you--"

"Oh, that." He ducked his head and grinned. "That's just, you know, for fun."

"For fun?" Michael couldn't hide his surprise. "Aren't you worried about abuse or murder or sexually transmitted diseases?"

Jeremy raised an eyebrow at him. "You're awfully knowledgeable on the subject."

Michael panicked. What was he supposed to say that? "I, umm--"

"Yeah," Jeremy cut him off with a shrug, "I worry about that stuff, but I'm careful." 

The waitress came back with their food and Michael dropped the subject. He obviously wasn't very good with this participant observation thing. Maybe he needed to work on that before he attempted to gain more knowledge from this subject-- Jeremy. They ate in silence and Michael really had to restrain himself from pulling out his wallet to pay for the meal. He let the kid do it, but he felt guilty. If only this kid knew that he had hundreds of dollars in cash on him.

"Do you need a place to stay?" Jeremy asked as they stood up.

"Oh, umm, no." Michael shook his head. "I'm going to stay down at the shelter."

"Alright, stay warm, man." Jeremy patted his back once before walking out the door. 

"Yeah," Michael said absently, but the kid was already gone.

For the next couple of months, Michael sat in his apartment and worked on his thesis. He had enough data, he thought, but it putting it into a coherent argument wasn't coming very easily to him. Every time he thought that he had a theory on their behavior, that kid's response would pop back into his head. Surely he was just an outlier. But what if he wasn't? After awhile, he gave up and brought up the problem to his advisor. Obviously, his advisor commented, you need to do some in-depth interviews. When Michael protested that it would be impossible to gain the community's trust, his advisor pointed out that he already had an in. Start with this so-called outlier and snowball the sample from there. Michael reluctantly conceded his advisor's point.

The next night, he found himself walking toward that corner in his regular clothes instead of the costume he had been wearing for months. He was nervous and unsure about this. What if this kid had disappeared? What if he didn't buy his story? But there he was, still looking like Buddy Holly, but his hair was a little longer now. Michael shoved his hands in his pockets and approached him.

"Hey."

"Hey, what are you looking for?" Jeremy paused and tilted his head. "Don't I know you?"

"I, umm--"

"Yeah." Jeremy snapped his fingers. "Raine, right?"

"Yeah, but--"

"Wow." Jeremy looked him up and down. "You clean up nice. Get a job or something?"

"Yeah, something like that."

"That's great, man," he said absently.

But then Jeremy turned and dismissed him to pursue a customer. Michael grabbed his arm. "Wait." Jeremy slowly turned and raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm, umm, looking."

Jeremy's eyebrow arched even further toward his hairline. "For what?"

"A... blow job," Michael said with great reluctance.

"That's twenty-five, up front," Jeremy said as he held out his hand.

Michael pulled out the sum from his pocket and laid it in Jeremy's palm. Within the blink of an eye, Jeremy had pocketed it and was walking down the alley. When Michael didn't immediately follow him, he paused and turned around. "Well?"

"I, umm..." Michael quickly walked to catch up to him. "Can we do this somewhere else?"

Jeremy shrugged. "Yeah, sure, but that's extra." 

"I have the money."

Jeremy nodded and led him around the corner to a men's hotel. Michael followed him up the rickety staircase inside and down the dark hallway into a tiny room about the size of his own closet back home. As soon as Jeremy shut the door, he moved to undo Michael's pants. 

Startled, Michael swallowed hard and jumped backwards, nearly knocking his head against the door in the process. "Wait."

"What now?" Jeremy asked as he stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest.

"What do you charge by the hour?"

"Hundred bucks, man."

Michael pulled out a roll of bills and handed them to Jeremy. "I just want to talk."

Jeremy paused in the middle of counting the money and laughed. "What?"

"I just want to talk to you," Michael repeated.

"For..." Jeremy paused and finished counting. "Two hundred bucks, you just want to talk?"

Michael nodded. "Yeah, that's right."

Jeremy pocket the money and shrugged as he sat down on the bed and patted the seat next to him all in one, graceful motion. "Alright, so we'll talk."

Cautiously, Michael came over and sat next to him on the bed, then he pulled out a notebook and a pencil from his coat pocket. "So, how long have you been doing this?"

"Doing what? Fucking guys for money?"

Putting it that way kind of shocked Michael, especially coming out of the mouth of someone who looked like he hadn't even finished high school yet. "Uhh, yeah."

"I don't know. On and off for a couple of years. Why?" He tilted his head at Michael when he didn't answer him in favor of writing down his response. "Are you going to write down everything I say?"

Michael looked up. "Yeah. Is that okay?"

"Why?" 

There was so much naked curiosity in the kid's eyes that Michael found that he couldn't lie. "I'm, umm, a researcher at U of T."

"Oh." He seemed to pause and process that. "That's wicked."

Michael couldn't help but smile at that. "Cool."

So he asked his questions and Jeremy gave him in-depth answers, much to Michael's surprise. He was so candid and open, it was fascinating. He explained that his parents were hippies and while they didn't care that he was gay, they weren't entirely sure about his bohemian lifestyle, not after they experienced the hardships of it themselves. When the going was good, Jeremy found steady employment as a jazz drummer, but when it wasn't going so hot, he came back to do this. He called himself a "freelance sexual deviant" and insisted that he really didn't do it for money. If he was really that strapped for cash, he could run home to his parents. "I just really fucking like sex," he said with such a wicked grin that Michael couldn't help but blush. 

When the two hours were up, Michael asked if Jeremy if he would help him find other subjects to interview. Jeremy laughed and said, "You pay those guys two hundred bucks and they'll do whatever you want, man. But I'll help you, sure."

As the weeks went by, Jeremy helped Michael construct his snowball sample. Michael would come by and Jeremy would grab one of the boys on the corner and send them in his direction. He was right though; the help wasn't really necessary. But Michael accepted it anyway and re-interviewed Jeremy several times. Somewhere in there, he realized having a crush on your informant probably violated several codes of ethics, but it didn't stop him. He needed Jeremy for his research, right? Only he had finished his thesis two weeks before and yet he still kept coming back to interview Jeremy. It was always, "oh, I forgot to ask..." 

This time, Jeremy wasn't having it. "Man, you asked me that weeks ago. Don't you book-smart types keep track of that shit?"

Michael looked down at his notebook and pretended to page back to find the answer. "Umm."

Jeremy took the notebook out of his hands and found it for him. He pointed to the entry. "May 10th, man. I've got a photographic memory." He paused and raised an eyebrow at Michael. "Which would also mean that I'm not blind."

Michael wasn't sure what to do. No professor had ever said what to do when your informant turned things around on you. His eyes kept on flicking from Jeremy's face to the notebook. "What are you talking about?"

Jeremy dropped the notebook to the floor and then grasped Michael's chin when his eyes followed it. "You want to fuck me."

"What? No." Michael denied and slid away from Jeremy. "I'm..." 

"Just doing research?" Jeremy slid closer to him. "Straight?" He dropped his hand to Michael's thigh. "Not into sex?"

Just that light touch to his thigh made Michael's breath quicken. He couldn't deny that he was curious. And his thesis was done with and turned in. You can't compromise your research when it's over with, right? "I..."

"What?" Jeremy's voice dropped down to a low murmur as his hand slid up Michael's thigh. "Shy?"

"Umm, no," Michael's voice came out breathless despite himself. "I just..."

"You just what?" 

"I've never..." The rest of the sentence came out in a rush. "Done anything like this before, I mean ever."

"Oh." Jeremy gave him that wicked grin of his. "But you want to, right?"

"Yes," Michael said despite himself.

Then Jeremy kissed him and all thoughts of research ethics or curiosity gone wrong fled his mind. Jeremy kissed like no woman Michael had ever been with. Like he was trying to devour your mouth, but be nice about it at the same time. Michael was so into it that it took him a couple of seconds to realize that Jeremy had him flat on his back on the bed and was unbuttoning his shirt. It became this intense, extended blur after that. Jeremy's mouth seemed to be everywhere at once along with his hands. After awhile, Michael couldn't distinguish the sensations. That is until he felt one of Jeremy's fingers inside him.

"Wait," Michael gasped.

Jeremy looked up and blinked. "What? You want to fuck me instead?"

Michael didn't know what he wanted, really, but he decided to go with the flow. He certainly didn't regret it. Jeremy was good at fucking, not that Michael had any other guy to compare him to, but he knew what sex was supposed to feel like and this felt a hundred times better than anything he had ever had. Afterward, as he tried to catch his breath, Michael wondered whether it was experience or just natural ability that made Jeremy so good. Then he realized that he was still trying to treat Jeremy like a research subject and he forced himself to shut off his brain for once.

For the next week, he showed up at Jeremy's corner regularly. He wasn't just addicted to the sex, but to being around Jeremy. He was so full of life. Something that Michael spent so much time studying but still couldn't seem to grasp himself. Every time he'd try to pay, Jeremy would wave him off with a laugh, insisting that he owed Michael hundreds of dollars worth of sex after all their little "talks." Michael tried to protest, but when he did, Jeremy seemed to be insulted, so after awhile, he dropped it. Even when he was sure that Jeremy had long since repaid any debt he thought he owed Michael, he kept quiet on it. By that time, Michael was fairly sure that whatever feelings he had for Jeremy were matched. 

"Hey, umm," Michael said between gasps for breath after their latest session. "I was thinking, you know, maybe we could go to my place next time."

Jeremy looked up from Michael's chest and tilted his head. "What? Why?"

"Well, you know, I like you a lot--"

"I like you too," Jeremy interrupted with a smile.

Michael couldn't help but smile back. "Yeah, and so I was thinking that it would be better if you came and lived with me."

Jeremy sat up and ran a hand through his hair with a frown. "Better for who?"

"You, of course," Michael said as he half sat up with his weight on his elbows.

"For me?" Jeremy laughed incredulously. "I don't think so."

Michael frowned at that. "But--"

"But what?" Jeremy snapped as he stood up and started to get dressed. "You thought you'd save me from my 'oppressive, criminal conditions'?"

Michael flushed. He was sure that Jeremy would never read his work. "I don't--"

Jeremy cut him off with a glare. "I don't need to be saved. I like the way I live. I'm comfortable with who I am." His voice got quieter. "And if you really liked me, you'd be okay with that."

"I..." Michael faltered. He had no argument against that. But what he had learned in the past year with his research wouldn't let him believe that Jeremy was really happy like this.

"Not everything in the world can conform to your research agenda." Jeremy said as he finished getting dressed. 

"I know that," Michael said quietly as he sat on the edge of the bed and started to pull on his pants and shoes.

Jeremy shook his head sadly. "I don't think that you do."

Michael stood up and fixed up his pants before throwing on his sweater. "Maybe you're right," he said sadly.

"I think it's better if this just ends here," Jeremy said with his head ducked. "Sometimes your experiments fail, I'm sure."

This wasn't just an experiment, Michael wanted to protest. But he just nodded instead and walked to the door, throwing his words over his shoulder. "Yeah, sometimes they do."


End file.
